Building a new computer too, and would like advice

[The New Normal]

The bits I'm looking at buying are as follows:

• EVGA nForce 680i SLI 775 NF68-A1
• Kingston PC2-8500 CL5 2GB 2*1GB HyperX
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
• Tuniq Tower 120

• eVGA e-GeForce 8800GT SSC 512MB
• Thermalright HR-03 GT
• Nexus 92mm Real Silent Case Fan

• Antec TruePower Quattro 850W (future SLI in mind)

Is this RAM a good match for this system?
It'll be in an Antec 900 case, so cooling shouldn't be too much of an issue. Actually I may need to bolt it down, lol.
I intend to overclock by upping the FSB a bit ... eventually.
Gaming is what I'm aiming at.
Does anything look like an "I can't believe you bought that you idiot" item?
Thanks for any help.

[jbennet]

Make sure you use high quality thermal paste on the corequad (buy some arctic silver, its the best but damn expensive) as it can get very hot

When buying the case/mobo ensure that "fat" PCI-Express cards such as video cards with huge heatsinks can fit in the case and some cases have bad design, and they wont.

[jwenting]

in fact most cases are poorly designed... And the most expensive ones aren't necessarilly the best (though in general better than the cheap ones).

Antec look great and are well engineered but are somewhat cramped inside.

[madoverclocker]

what os are you running? if you're considering vista, get 4 gigs of ram (even though 32 will only see 3.5 gigs). it will make all the difference in the world. nice choice on the mobo, i've heard nothing but the best about overclocking evga boards.

[jbennet]

32 bit is pointless with 4gb as windows will never allocate moe than 2gb to applications, and wil allocate the other 2gb to the kernel, wasting it.

[madoverclocker]

i saw a HUGE difference when i upgraded from 2 gigs to 4 on my vista system...

[The New Normal]

Thanks for your thoughts everyone.

To jbennet and jwenting:

• Arctic Silver No. 5 is definitely the way to go.
• I'm hoping my 900 will have enough room, I think it will (might get out the measuring tape to be on the safe side). That case having it's PSU at the bottom makes me want a PSU without a top/bottom fan to leave any 2nd graphics card's flow alone.

To madoverclocker

• I will dual boot Vista64 and XP pro, with Vista as my primary and XP for 'legacy support'.
• For 4GB I'd want 2 x 2GB sticks, but there's none on this supported mem. list http://evga.com/support/mbmem/
• Is 'not officially compatible' RAM ok? like this hellishly expensive stuff http://tinyurl.com/2y6ec2

Thanks again :icon_cheesygrin:

[jbennet]

no, go for the supported suff.

That mega-expensive ram doesnt make a massive difference unless you have an insanely overclockable CPU like an Intel Extreme

[madoverclocker]

actually, the supported corsair ram i could find was more expensive that what he's found. really, i've never heard of ANYONE having problems with corsair ram, and should you encounter problems corsair has world class customer support.

supported: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145165

new normal's: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145176&Tpk=Corsair%2bTWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX

sure you could slap a set of cheap patriot sticks in, but you might not get the good micron chips. your choice.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220144

i've just looked at fps comparisons with sli 8800gt's vs single 8800gtx and the results are... interesting. right now the obvious graphics choice is the 8800gt with awesome power/dollar ratio, but in sli with both vista and xp it will actually run slower on some games.

check it out

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=702

[jwenting]

I just stick with stock Kingston RAM, but then I don't overclock anything.
Cheap(ish), stable, and performs reasonably well.

[jbennet]

i got crucial, cheap n cheerful